Poland to delay tax on shale gas until 2020

7:24 AM MDT | May 24, 2013 | Michael Ravenscroft

Poland plans to delay a proposed tax on shale-gas exploration until 2020, after several foreign energy companies, including ExxonMobil and Marathon, decided to stop exploration there. "The law on hydrocarbon taxes will come into force in 2015, but taxes will not be collected until 2020 to encourage investors to explore for the fuel," says Jacek Rostowski, Poland's finance minister. Poland wants to become the European Union's biggest producer of shale gas and cut its dependency on gas imported from Russia. Previous estimates of the size of Poland's...